Lucifer
by lanternboy
Summary: In the Grid Lucifer programs reality the way he wants it. Dark and lifeless though it may be, he manages to entertain himself. All is fine until the ghost in the machine makes an appearance. / T for language and some sexy moments.
1. Chapter 1

One (interactive fabricated pleasure mechanism)

Lucifer sat back in the comfortable leather seat, his hands resting on his lap, his gaze locked on the endless lights flying by past the dark tinged windows—they looked like fireflies or the eyes of monsters running quickly through the dark, anything but what they really were, fake, fabricated sensory images made to create the illusion of reality.

He turned his face away.

The car moved at an incredible speed, eating up illusionary distances almost as fast as thought. The inside of it was lined with softly glowing lights that made a maze above his head and along the roof. They didn't mean anything but they were interesting to look at—it was like looking at the Grid from above, all the lines spreading out into linear, intricate designs. There was a little fridge full of drinks, and a control screen hovering invitingly in the air, waiting for him to give any order at all, anything that came into his mind. It was a long way to the edge, after all, and he had to get through the hours somehow. It seemed incredible to him that even traveling this fast, it took so long to get all the way across the Grid. There was so much space, it was almost impossible to get your head around. Not infinite—but almost. Almost.

Lucifer reached forward and touched the control screen. Options in linear code spread out before his eyes. He typed a few signs with one hand, and a man blinked into existence at his side. The man was ghostly pale and wore a completely white suit, which gave off the faintest glow. The man turned to Lucifer and smiled, but the rest of his face didn't move. "Lucifer, how can I help you this evening?"

"Entertain me."

The man's smile remained in place like it had been carved that way into his skin. His eyes were pale and lifeless, and he didn't move unless there was a reason to move. He raised one arm and traced designs in the air—a list of letters and images appeared. "Your options, Lucifer."

Lucifer looked at them without much interest. "You can think of something better than this, can't you?"

The man's smile faltered briefly, and then it sprang back into place, looking somewhat painful. "Yes, I can, Lucifer. Let me offer some other amusements not on the list. IFPM, a small dose to last six point four hours—or your pick of human companions, for pleasure or vocal interaction…"

Lucifer waved his hand impatiently. The man scrambled for some more ideas, and then said, "I could offer you ten solid hours of dreamless sleep, if you are in the mood for quiet."

None of the ideas especially appealed to him. "Forget it." He leaned over and pressed a button on the floating control screen, and the man just managed a scowl before he disappeared.

Lucifer fell back against the seat, feeling tired and impatient. He could have easily accepted the IFPM and wandered off into a daze of hallucinations for a few hours, but he didn't like the odd buzz he got afterwards. Besides he'd used it enough lately, and he'd been missing things, too many of them. He had to know what was going on, or anything could go wrong, so easily. He was the ruler of the entire Grid, and he had to make sure he didn't slip and lose his power.

He opened the small fridge and pulled out a black bottle. Lines of green light shone strangely across the sides; he unscrewed the lid and put the cool rim to his lips. For a world that was populated entirely by programmed, fake humans who didn't require food or drink or sleep, the drinks were pretty good. There had never been a program invented for alcohol, so Lucifer was drinking soda of one kind or another, which made him feel significantly less important for a moment.

He put the bottle back and laced his hands together. They were pale hands, long and thin, with chewed nails painted a dull silvery blue. Lucifer had done his best to make himself look like just another part of the program. He wore a long black coat that fell to his knees, made of a heavy, warm fabric that could ward off the metallic chill of this place. There were designs all over it, more glowing lines like a map of the Grid; they glowed steadily, pulsing from blue to green to yellow to red, and back again. Lucifer's hair was dark, teased in a way that made him look a little older than he was. He was not very old at all; in the Grid he made a point of forgetting his age.

And the lights slid past the tinged windows. Lucifer sank into the seat, closed his eyes and kneaded his hands together, thinking. Thinking. There was so much to keep up with in this world that literally ran on nothing but numbers and data, all twisting and pulling and running around with each other like a great clockwork machine, spitting out space and time and shape and color. Lucifer understood most of it, and he could manipulate it, too. The whole universe of the Grid lay right at his fingertips.

Unfortunately it was unpredictable. He might have had ultimate control, but the ghost in the machine could fight him, and it did.

"Lucifer, may I offer an activity for you?"

Lucifer's eyes slid open. The man had returned—even though he hadn't programmed him to appear randomly. There it was—the ghost in the machine. Lucifer fixed his eyes on the pale, ghostly-looking man, and said, "Tell me."

"A human companion for pleasure would do you well at this moment. You are irritable and impatient and physical contact will decrease perceptive travel time by approximately five point eight hours."

Lucifer crossed his arms and put a foot up on the fridge. Basically what was being offered was a programmed prostitute. Lucifer would never have even approached the idea outside of the Grid—but in the Grid, nothing was real, and he could do anything he liked. In here the aftereffects of IFPM were only dizziness and a stupor. He could get high until the Grid collapsed and would never die from it. Sex was no different, though some guilty part of him tried to tell himself to avoid it when he could, if only for the sake of his virtue.

"The pleasure center of your brain is already stimulating," the man offered helpfully, without a twitch in his carved-in smile.

Lucifer wondered if he had to de-program this thing. "Fine, do it," he said.

"Male or female, Lucifer?"

"Surprise me."

A boy popped into existence next to Lucifer, clothed scantily, even by the Grid's standards. Lucifer's eyes traveled up and down the humanized program without much enthusiasm; he was pretty, naturally, with black hair and piercing blue eyes that did indeed smolder. They crackled with electricity—the real kind.

"Clothes?" Lucifer inquired to the man, who was still sitting there smiling.

"I calculated that you might like taking them off."

The program slid onto Lucifer's lap and ran cool, illusionary fingers through his hair. "Go ahead, leave," Lucifer said to the man, and reached around the program to press a button. The smiling man went away, leaving just him and the programmed boy in the backseat.

"What's your name?" Lucifer asked, as the program unbuttoned his coat for him.

"Does it matter?" the boy said in a soft, very human voice. He calmly unbuttoned Lucifer's coat and slid it off his shoulders.

"They must have given you something," Lucifer said, as the program slid his hands across his chest. He had no real interest in this fake thing, and certainly didn't care what it was called, but it felt strange to use a program for this and not talk to it. He wanted to pretend it was real—not a lot, just a little. Programs couldn't talk about themselves, or much of anything. They existed to serve a purpose, and that purpose they would serve, or destroy themselves in the process.

The program straddled Lucifer's legs with his, and leaned in to kiss him under his ear. Lucifer hadn't expected an answer anyway. He blew out a breath and let the program mouth his neck, sliding its lips around his skin while its hands traveled over Lucifer's body. Lucifer was beginning to feel hot and dizzy, especially in his lower parts.

"Let me get these off," Lucifer said, pulling at the program's scanty jacket, which showed most of his upper body anyway. The program leaned back obediently to let him.

Outside the lights slid past as always. Lucifer barely felt the car moving. He undid the program's belt with calm, deft fingers. The man had been right, he was enjoying undressing it. He got the pants off, and there was nothing underneath, which Lucifer found vaguely disappointing. The program sat on Lucifer's lap again and put its mouth against his, body pressing into his with an eagerness and a fierceness that Lucifer found a bit strange in a program; maybe it was a new thing. He liked it.

He barely noticed that the car had stopped.

Lucifer looked up, baffled. Surely ten hours hadn't passed, just like that. He sat up, and the program stopped touching him, and pressed its face into his neck.

"Why have we stopped?" Lucifer demanded of the backseat.

"_There is a violation, Lucifer_," the voice responded.

"Get off," Lucifer said, pushing the program off of him.

"My name is Eran," the program said.

Lucifer turned to look at it, and then there was a startling flash of light from past the tinted windows.

He threw the door open and swept out onto one of the uncountable number of dark, empty, endless streets that made up the surface of the grid. Tall, faceless shapes meant to look like buildings lined the so-called street, which was black and smooth and featureless under Lucifer's feet. It felt like walking on darkness, or nothing at all; the air smelled cool and sharp, vaguely metallic. Here and there lights flashed, probably reasonless, in all sorts of dim, strange colors. Occasionally a wayward line of brightness would shoot across the darkness, just to reappear somewhere else it shouldn't have been. You could watch the goings-on of the surface Grid for hours, it was so strange and fascinating.

But that didn't matter now—he didn't have time to reflect on meaningless things—because there was something going on in the middle of the street.

One of the formidable square-shaped Virus Protection Vehicles—Lucifer had been trying to reprogram everyone to call them VPVs for short, they seemed to avoid acronyms in the Grid for some technical reason, or maybe it was pure stubbornness—but anyways, that's what it did, protected the Grid from viruses, from unwanted things that somehow weaseled their way into the clockwork machine—and it was hovering in the middle of the street, manned by a dark-clothed, blank-faced officer. Another officer was standing looking down at a man lying on the ground, twitching and moaning, his face blurry and shifting. Little bits of him kept disappearing as he twitched.

Lucifer approached. "What's going on here?"  
The officer's helmeted face swung up to look at him. "Unidentified program where it should not be."

Lucifer stopped next to the twitching person, and eyed it carefully. It turned two colorless eyes in his direction and grinned—for a split second the grin shifted into a deep frown, probably an error—and it said, "Lucifer you're going to die!"

Lucifer watched its twitching face without much interest. He pulled up a screen from midair and typed a few codes quickly and confidently; there was a blinding flash of white light, and Lucifer, blinking hard, saw that the twitching virus was still there, grinning up at him, bits of its face disappearing and reappearing.

"What is this?" Lucifer said, looking at the officer. "Explain it."

The officer looked back at him. "Unidentified program where it—,"  
"I _understand_!" he shouted. "Why was it not possible to delete?"

The officer stared at him beneath his helmet, unmoving.

Lucifer snarled his annoyance and pulled up the screen again. In half a moment, the man who he'd programmed to assist him appeared from thin air, smiling in his pained way, his face sallow and lifeless.

"Yes, Lucifer?" he said politely.

"Tell me—and don't tell me what I already know—_why _is there a virus lying on this road that can't be deleted?"

The man, still smiling, said, "Perhaps you used the wrong—,"

"I don't make mistakes that simple," Lucifer said curtly. "What do you make of this thing?"

The man, not looking at the still-grinning, still-twitching virus, suggested, "I wouldn't know, Lucifer. I was programmed by you, and don't have any capability to seek out information you don't already possess yourself—,"  
Lucifer got rid of the smiling man with one keystroke, blinked out of existence with his pained smile firmly in place, then turned back to the virus. He gave it a long look—while it whispered 'You're going to die, Lucifer' over and over—and then turned back to the screen. With both hands now, he typed for some long moments, as the officer watched impassively and the VPV hovered silently behind him, emitting a soft orange glow over the dead black landscape.

Every code he tried was blocked by a simple word: _Error. _Lucifer's skin prickled and his hands shook with rage as he unbelievingly tried more and more obscure codes to destroy the resisting virus, which twitched grinning at his feet. With every _error _there was a blinding white flash, leaving lights dancing in Lucifer's eyes. He was swearing under his breath as he searched his memory for more codes to end the virus's program. He felt deeply unnerved by seeing the _error _message so many times—he hadn't seen that since he'd first started working on the Grid, when he'd been more than just a little inexperienced, more than a little stupid.

"_End _program," he said furiously under his breath, using the same code he'd first used, to the same effect: a blinding white flash, and the virus still there, twitching insistently, smiling like it knew something he didn't. Lucifer eyed it, had a thought, and put the code in.

The virus said, "If you're trying to find the codes that originally made me, you'll find nothing. Lucifer, you've hit a dead end: I came from nothing." And just like that, the virus blinked out of existence, leaving nothing behind but a blank stretch of dark, smooth, featureless road.

The officer turned and walked away—it had no further business here, its only purpose was to destroy viruses, and since that had been done, it was done here, too. Lucifer chewed on one of his nails, feeling deeply shaken. He watched the VPV move out of sight silently like a large glowing orange phantom, then turned back to his car, waiting patiently on the stretch of dark street, and opened the door, sliding in and banging it shut.

"Go," he said briefly, leaning back against the seat. The car immediately responded and drove off down the waiting road.

The backseat was empty, and Lucifer was left to yell "Shit!" and kick the small fridge, which rattled its complaint and left his foot stinging. He leaned back sharply and ran his hands through his hair, feeling the urge to destroy things.

"Hello, Lucifer," said the smiling man, reappearing.

"Get the _hell _off!" Lucifer shouted.

The smiling man didn't stop smiling. Lucifer, swearing under his breath, pulled up a screen and typed hard for a moment. When he was done, the man's face had been forced into a painfully neutral expression. His dead, pale eyes stared at Lucifer with no life behind them.

"What?" Lucifer said finally, running his hands through his hair again.

"Would you like any form of entertainment, Lucifer?"

"You bastard—you utter—Jesus. What form of entertainment are you offering? Actually, forget it, just knock me out with IFPM. Just do that."

"Yes, Lucifer," the no-longer-smiling man said. "Please lean back while I implant the drug."


	2. Chapter 2

Two (endroit sombre)

The place buzzed with activity; lights glowed from every surface, in a myriad of confusing colors that were difficult to look at, and mesmerising all the same. The people were similar—there were different kinds, several white-clad waiters wandering about holding plates and trays for bright-colored drinks; there were scantily-clothed programs that had imaginary conversations with each other, and red-clothed programs that stood still, who could be called upon to perform tasks; together, they made a chaos of movement and color, with no discernible order or purpose. It did, to considerable effect, create a very believable night club.

Lucifer was in the middle of it, leaning back in a very comfortable chair, a cup of bright blue liquid balanced on his knee. He had dressed more ridiculously than usual to fit the occasion, in a long black and silver cloak patterned with shifting shapes that were fun to look at and recalled the effects of IFPM. He had dozed off on it for the rest of the trip across the Grid, and now he was near the very edge of the place, where he would observe a crack he'd noticed—just a crack. No rhyme or reason to it; it just existed, and he couldn't fix it from far away, so here he was. But it didn't matter where he was if he wanted to visit the Endroit Sombre—it was anywhere he wanted it to be. Usually, he put it in the exact center of the Grid, a sort of downtown place he'd created that was full of programs, busy and always awake and at his command. But today, the Endroit Sombre existed near the edge of existence, near that crack he had to look into.

But he could think about that later. He was still feeling the effects of IFPM, and the lights of the imaginary night club seemed to shift and move a little more wildly than they were supposed to. Sometimes existence seemed to pause for a moment as if he needed to catch up with it again—that's what IFPM did, and more interesting things besides. It made him see neat things and not care about much at all.

"So Lucifer," said a tall dark man sitting across from him. This was Peter, a character who ran a large hotel in the downtown part of the Grid. He was very rich, or at least, Lucifer had decided he could be. He wore an outrageous red robe with orange spikes on the shoulders, and a pair of dark glasses over his eyes, his hair falling in silver tendrils around his face. Rings sparkled on his fingers; around him sat a crowd of men and women, mostly women without very many clothes; their purpose was to provide atmosphere, to listen and say nothing.

"How can I help you, Peter," said Lucifer, feeling extremely at ease as he leaned back in his chair, taking the occasional sip of whatever it was he was drinking. It wasn't alcohol, it tasted like grape juice, but at least it was fluorescent and blue.

"Well, Lucifer… you don't come around nearly often enough," said Peter, holding out his hands and leaning towards him. "We miss you here… everyone wants a part of you. I daresay there isn't enough of you to go around."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Program another one of me."

Peter laughed predictably. He was always trying to flatter Lucifer. "It wouldn't be the same. As they say… there's a million of me, but only one Lucifer."

The programs surrounding them smiled and nodded and gave Lucifer hungry looks.

"Why, I saw myself the other day, walking into a bookstore," Peter said, and received a few chuckles. He laced his fingers together and said, "Well, anyway, anyway. Yeah… we miss you here, Lucifer. We really do. Things get lonely."

"I'm sure they do," said Lucifer, distractedly taking a sip of grape juice.

Peter watched him, then smiled and said, "We heard about the virus."

Lucifer looked at the big, silvery-haired man. He tried to put his drink down—there was nowhere to put it, but a girl eagerly took it and held on to it. "What did you say?"

"We heard about the virus," said Peter. "You know, the one you couldn't delete. Weird, isn't that?"

Lucifer wasn't sure if the IFPM was deciding to hit again, or if he had only misunderstood the context. Programs like Peter had no way of knowing about an isolated event like a wayward virus found in the far reaches of the Grid; if Lucifer had wanted to discuss it, he would have programmed Peter to know about it. He ran a hand through the hair over his eyes and said quietly, "It was very strange. And how, Peter, do you know about that?"

Peter didn't reply.

Lucifer was feeling extremely uneasy. "Answer the ques—,"

The lights in the Endroit Sombre suddenly went dim, and quiet, moody music came up, filling the air with its gentle waves. Most of the programs had disappeared, replaced by only a few, most of which were still sitting around Peter and Lucifer.

"It's gotten late, hasn't it?" Peter said, looking at his bright silver watch. "God, the time gets away from us, doesn't it, Lucifer. It might be because I'm still getting off my high… I think you too, right?"

"Me too," Lucifer repeated, feeling again very at ease. The drug hadn't worn off, and then he'd feel a little strange for a while… but once it did go away, he could work on that crack… but not now… His eyelids felt heavily. He was tired and very calm.

He roused himself just enough to pull up a screen and end the Endroit Sombre program, tiredly replacing it with a large, dark room, where he lay on a soft circular bed. It was comfortable, deep, and warm; he closed his eyes, and the darkness behind his eyelids spun weirdly, giving the impression that he was floating. He opened them, staring up at the ceiling flickering dimly with almost non-existent light, just enough to outline the objects in the room, some chairs and tables and plants.

"What was your name… Eran?" he murmured aloud, pulling up the gently glowing screen and typing a few codes. The neutral-faced man appeared, standing over his bed.

"Yes, Lucifer," he said, as polite as ever.

"Recall that program you ran earlier," he said, running hands through his hair. "You know the one."

"A direct command would be helpful—,"

Lucifer typed a few codes, his hands feeling a bit numb from the IFPM. The neutral-faced man said, "Of course" and vanished. In his place was the pretty dark-haired boy from the car. He sat cross-legged on Lucifer's bed, his face a void of shadow in the dimness of the room.

"I want to know something," Lucifer said, his eyelids feeling heavy. He irritably pulled an arm across his face, feeling a bit sick.

The program waited.

"You said you had a name," Lucifer said, fighting back the dizziness making the room gently spin and turn. He needed another dose of IFPM before things really started to hurt. But wasn't there that crack to deal with… no, later…

"My name is Eran," the program told him.

Lucifer opened his eyes and looked at the form sitting on his bed. He felt so out of sorts, it was hard to remember why he was even asking these questions. He said, "But I don't program codes for names. I program codes that can grow on their own, manipulate themselves into a billion possible forms, so that through a mediator they can be shaped into what I want to use them for. I don't make names. Programs don't have names." He watched the shadowy form in the darkness.

"I do," said Eran.

"Impossible," Lucifer said, drawing his fingers over his face, which hurt. "That's completely impossible. Programs can only identify themselves by tracking their own history. The least you could have is a number of some kind… not a name… don't you understand what I mean…"

There was a pause, and then Eran said, "I have been programmed for a specific use… Lucifer."

"I know, I know. Withhold it." Lucifer fought to sit up, and had to get his breath with his hands pressed against his face for a moment. He shakily ran his fingers through his hair and watched the gently, calmly, sickeningly moving darkness. He could feel Eran's presence near him on the soft, deep bed.

"Is this some kind of game, Lucifer?" Eran said.

Lucifer closed his eyes, feeling the world dissolve and reassemble itself behind his eyelids. "I want to know…" He groaned, for a moment overcome with a ringing dizziness, and fell back onto the bed.

He tried to get his eyes open, and managed, "That's all it was supposed to be. A game."

The darkness took him down with it.

Lucifer stood before the crack, staring, calculating. There were no other programs around, he'd ordered them out so he could concentrate. The end of the Grid rose before him, a solid black wall intersected with thin silvery-blue lines, a visual representation of binary code—the wall rose up and never ended, fading into the black sky overhead. In the distance lights flickered, and the shadowy forms of buildings and other structures, only there to provide atmosphere.

His shoes clicked and echoed on the plain, perfectly smooth, cold floor as he stepped back to survey the crack. He pulled up a screen from the air and typed some codes—the result was an erratic scrolling of numbers and letters, which he took in as they rolled before his eyes.

Something was evidently quite wrong.

He took the screen down and took a careful step toward the crack—it was not very big at all, a single slash in the black wall, from which was pouring broken strings of code. What had caused it, he didn't know. But it wasn't meant to be there, that was for certain.

"I need help with this," he murmured, punching in a code. The no-longer-smiling man appeared at his side, his arms behind his back, the silvery-blue light casting his phantom-pale face in strange shadows.

"What do you need, Lucifer?" he said.

"There's broken code here," Lucifer said, pulling up the screen again and typing in the same code as before. The numbers scrolled quickly down the screen, and the neutral-faced man watched them. "Too fast for me to read," Lucifer went on. "What do you see?"

The man didn't answer, his eyes flicking back and forth. When the code ended, he reached out for the screen, and typed a series of codes in—a few seconds later he'd brought up several lines of numbers and letters, glowing an angry red.

"Those are your problem codes, Lucifer," the man said pleasantly.

"Good." Lucifer dismissed him, and he blinked out of thin air. He studied the codes closely. It was _rare _for anything to go wrong—in fact, it didn't happen unless _he _was the one who had made an error. Once a code was put in correctly, there was almost no chance that it could break or stop working. The only explanation was that he'd made a mistake somewhere that had found its way here and done damage.

But _why _a crack? He studied the hypothetical break in the wall, and breathed out angrily, pulling up the screen again. He could fix this. He could.

His fingers flashed against the softly glowing keypad. With every code he input, a red _error _came up. It wasn't accepting anything, it was spitting out all his attempts to patch up the crack.

"Come _on,_" he hissed. An idea struck him, and he paused with his fingers hovering over the keypad. There was that one command, _End. _If he typed it, the whole program—the entirety of the Grid—would shut itself down. Sometimes that was how you fixed computers (although this wasn't exactly a computer)—you just shut them down, and when they started up again, the problem had fixed itself.

He eyed the crack, and scrolled through the broken code, thinking.

But did he really want to do that? Shut down _everything_?  
"Lucifer," said a voice, and the neutral-faced man reappeared at his side.

Lucifer massaged his face and looked at the pale form standing beside him. It was another mystery how he kept doing that, appearing without being summoned. "_What _do you want?"

"If I may offer a suggestion?"

"Yes?"

"Destroy this part of the Grid."

Lucifer looked at him. "_Destroy _it? That's a dangerous thing to do."

"If you destroy it, and rebuild it, the problem may be fixed," the man went on.

"But I may also destroy the entire thing," Lucifer said, walking away from the wall, raking his hands through his hair. "One line of code is all it takes—if it's embedded into this section and connected to everything else, the Grid might stop existing entirely."  
"That is a chance you would have to take."

Lucifer turned back toward the crack, and took a breath. "I'll avoid that at all costs. For now I'm going to ignore this crack—maybe it'll be kind to me and decide to fix itself. You are dismissed." He ended the man's program, and he managed to frown (even though Lucifer had de-programed all his facial expressions) just before he disappeared.

Lucifer eyed the crack, and then after a long moment, turned his back on it.

He knew it was a bad idea to leave even as he walked away from it.


End file.
